Against denial. Against fascism. Against climate nonsense, racism, misogyny, religious bigotry, and anti-intellectualism.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Anders Behring Breivik: The first climate denier mass murderer?

This is all highly speculative and totally unconfirmed, but among the many rumors floating around about the right-wing thug and child-killer Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered some 80 (and counting) Norweigens, it is thought he may be the infamous white supremacist and climate denier "Fjordman":

Anders Behring Breivik has previously driven the blog Fjordman and later for many years been a writer for the anti-Muslim and Zionist bloggers Gates of Vienna and Jihad Watch, under the pseudonym Fjordman.

On July 17, released Anders Behring Breivik a message on Twitter where he writes that “One person with a belief is Equal To The force of 100,000 WHO Have only not raised.”

Fjordman's fanatical right-wing extremism includes some heaping scoops of climate denier. He writes:

After it was revealed that much of the data regarding alleged man-made global warming was deliberately fabricated, which constitutes one of the largest and most expensive anti-scientific frauds in history, most of its Leftist backers continued as if nothing had happened. The fact that they had promoted outright lies and slimed their opponents based on these lies mattered little.

He's also a fan of the looney cosmic ray theories deniers cling to:

Henrik Svensmark and his colleagues carried out a landmark study of cosmic rays and clouds. They demonstrated that such rays could produce small aerosols, the basic building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei. The condensation of clouds affects the energy balance and by extension the temperature on Earth. They received support for these studies from the Danish Carlsberg Foundation, founded by the beer producer which was an early pioneer in scientific brewing.

This is early days . . . we don't know if Anders Behring Breivik is Fjordman, or what he believes. I'll happily update this post tomorrow if the speculation proves to be unfounded. But one has to at least ask: does this mark the day when climate deniers, spurred on by their right-wing propaganda and paranoid fear of anyone on the left, moved from waving nooses in people's faces to actual terrorism, from threatening children to killing children?

Norwegian TV2 reports that Breivik belongs to "right-wing circles" in Oslo. Swedish news site Expressen adds that he has been known to write to right-wing forums in Norway, is a self-described nationalist and has also written a number of posts critical of Islam.

Certainly sounds consistent with what we know of Fjordman. And a news site (I think) in Norway reports:

Anders Behring Breivik, according to own data, previously driven the blog Fjordman and later for many years been a writer for the anti-Muslim and Zionist bloggers Gates of Vienna and Jihad Watch, under the pseudonym Fjordman.

UPDATE: Given the cache of posts by Anders Behring Breivik, now available in English translation here, I doubt he is "Fjordman." He is a self-professed admirer of "Fjordman" and his theories, praising him repeatedly, but unless he is unusually narcissistic, they seem to be different people.

Breivik appears in the documents as a right-winger obsessed with Muslims and "socialists" and "Marxists," much like many climate deniers, but climate change, one way or the other, does not seem to be one of his main preoccupations.

Where Breivik certainly does intersect with the climate denier perspective is in this paranoid hatred of the left, this invocation of the nearly vanished ideology of Marxism as a vital and powerful force guiding anyone not firmly with the consensus of the extreme, racist, xenophobic, anarchist right. These shadows became so real to Breivik that he murdered dozens of the children of members of Norway's mainstream center-left Labor party.

This is something we've seen time and again on denier sites, or anywhere deniers are lightly moderated, including the New York Times Dot Earth blog, the Blackboard, and Climate Etc. Of course it is endemic to sites like WUWT, Climatequotes, Climate Depot and many, many others.

I'll be highlighting some of these comments in the coming days to illustrate the links between this far-right ideology and those who are in denial about global warming. The relationship between this ideology and political violence is now, sadly, only too apparent.

UPDATE: Breivik does claim to be Fjordman, at least by the translation (of his manifesto) I have:

This is actually sound advice and in my view the strategy Western survivalists should follow. When I first started writing as Fjordman I focused on how to “fix the system.” I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that the system cannot be fixed. Not only does it have too many enemies; it also contains too many internal contradictions. If we define the “system” as mass immigration from alien cultures, Globalism, multiculturalism and suppression of free speech in the name of “tolerance,” then this is going to collapse. It’s inevitable.

Current events are confusing! We do know, based on Breivik's manifesto, that he's a climate denier, but whether is is Fjordman is still up in the air. Perhaps Fjordman is a shared handle, and he has sometimes been Fjordman, like a guest blogger, and sometimes not?

If a more definitive answer becomes available I'll post another update. Meanwhile, we have direct evidence from the manifesto as to Breivik's climate denier beliefs.

@frflyer,How do you know that. Very few scientists truly understand climate change rationally. Most climate scientists(atleast here in australia) mostly work for political parties. It is very important for our species to separate politics from science atleast for the sake of science, else the common man would loose 'confidence' in 'scientists'

You would think you left wing loons would have learned from the Loughner and Discovery Channel shooter incidents to stop from making wild ass guesses and wait for facts. Then again if you did that you wouldn't be a left wing loon.

Did you once think to check those websites you mentioned "fjordman" frequents to see if he was posting?

Nah, of course not that would make logical sense. If you had done that you would have found he was posting on Gates of Vienna during the incident: http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=8651944&postID=2198007947751574643&isPopup=true

Hey with your fact checking skills you could get a job with the New York Times.

If this is true it's very disappointing. It's been shown that the more scientific knowledge a person has, the more likely he is to be a AGW skeptic. Also, you would have to be a blind man not to see that Muslim immigration is becoming a serious problem in western countries. How could someone who is quite sane in his thinking and opinions become such a despicable peice of dirt and commit such an atrocity? He just doesn't fit the (left) profile.

"It's been shown that the more scientific knowledge a person has, the more likely he is to be a AGW skeptic."

That's not actually what the research shows. Climate "skeptics" are a common phenomenon among lay people, but very rare among scientists. So the more scientific knowledge one has, the less likely one is to be a climate "skeptic."

"It's been shown that the more scientific knowledge a person has, the more likely he is to be a AGW skeptic."

What, like just about every climate scientist, every major science academy, etc, etc? I think what you meant was the more a person hangs out at cranky conspratorial websites and relies on dubious news sources the more likely he is to be a AGW pseudo-sceptic (AKA denialist).

The above comment is absolutely ludicrous. Terrorist violence has always been perpetrated by various elements of the right. From social-conservatives attacking abortion doctors and other races and homosexuals, to anti-government (a hallmark of conservatism) wackjobs like Timothy McVeigh and Jarod Laughner, to religious/social nut jobs like islamic and christian fundamentalists and all the murderous events they have taken part in. Absolutely every "terror" situation humanity has ever encountered has been at the hands of some conspiracy theorist and/or element of conservatism (anti-gov, xenophobia, nationalism, social-conservatism, religious extremism, etc)

Someone else? As opposed to blaming myself for a right-wing Christian fundamentalist's killing spree at a summer camp? What explains this bizaire effort to blame "leftists" for the mass murder of children by a right-wing nut?

I don't know that a general susceptibility to paranoia is really best understood as an ideology. Look at Loughner; very anti-government, but also admired Hitler, and also Stalin. Is that an ideology? No two of those three things make sense together. But I think to hold marginal views (like pro-Nazi) you either have to be paranoid or quickly will be, as you need to explain the dark forces that are keeping everyone else from seeing the truth or preventing the silent majority who you think is with you from speaking up. And once you've gone far down that path all sorts of conspiracy theories don't seem like much of a stretch.

That said there does seem to be a strong climate denier/black helicopter link. The belief seems to be that a global problem will be the justification for the creation of one world government to solve it, so we must fight anyone suggesting any serious global problem exists.

Been warming a long time save for a couple of tiny ice cold times that some GW "scientists" tried to DENY, since the last big ice age, still have some ice year round, so to me still have some warming to go. That's how it works, like a pendulum from thousands to millions of years long.

Carbon? Pfft, treat it as a offending or toxic 'pollutant' ? Plants eat this stuff!... whatever but it's not a forcing factor on the climate systems - it's just too puny.

Oh and hate to break the news to you - your golden CO2 egg is easily proven to be ponzi scam as more and more people are able to explain rationally why it's not science, not true and not credible.

Warming is a good thing, I wish we were, instead we are a bit cooler and we're noticing.

Here in Can, already have short summers, we notice, we note the extra harsh winter of late in our extra expensive hydro/heating bills and I personally - hate the cold. Cold kills life more than heat.

Nothing grows on ice, life however sparce exists in deserts.

Anyone not questioning this is being lazy intellectually.You have to question this or somewhere along the way you were taught not to think logically.

Sad that so many won't have the needed discussions about this 'settled' science approach to begin with.

Settled science on tiny bits and pieces that are just being discovered - considering the subject - earth sciences?

Says who?

You're going to let some group of scientists led by experts like Al Gore - no matter who else they are - say they "know all" there is to "know" about our whole climate systems and can predict the weather outcome in the far future?

Wonder why no one is talking up the "gun control" angle? That is because Norway has among the most restrictive gun laws in the world. Which means that everyone was helpless in the face of this loony tune.

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